Friday, June 20, 2008

For Pallimed readers who have not ventured out to other blogs, there are some wonderful sites you may want to visit to broaden your knowledge of the palliative medicine field.

The Hospice Foundation of America sponsors the Hospice and Caregiving Blog, which is edited by Krista Renenger. The blog offers short posts highlighting hospice stories in the media, recent political issues relevant to hospice agencies, and caregiver stories. Some recent recommended posts include:

The other blog that we occasionally link to is the Hospice Blog written by Hospice Guy. He scaled back his posting frequency for a few months but I am glad he is back to writing a little more often. As an administrator for a hospice, his posts focus more on the practical issues of running a hospice agency and how that may impact patient care. His blog is most well known for the 'How to Choose a Hospice' series first started in 2005 and now being updated for 2008. If you type in 'choose hospice or 'pick hospice' his posts get pretty high in the search engine, so if you work for a hospice, you may want to see what he writes, since your potential future patients/families may be using his criteria. Here are the topics for the series 'How to Choose a Hospice':

Dr. Maurice Bernstein asks how do you want your doctor to be dressed. For palliative care doctors, I think the norm is no white coat, +/- a visible stethoscope. Of course this inevitably leads to the question, "When is the doctor going to be here? You don't look or act like a doctor."

A non-blog site highlighting death & dying as an integral part of life is the online magazine Obit. The site is professionally produced, and has interesting features like Died on the Same Day and Obit Revisited which looks at historical figures and the impact they had in life and death. Slightly morbid if viewed superficially, but with deeper reading the site is very life-affirming.

Pallimed: A Hospice & Palliative Medicine Blog Founded June 8, 2005.
This blog is a labor of love whose only mission is educational. Its content is strictly the work of its authors and has no affiliation with or support from any organization or institution, including the authors' employers. All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of its authors.
In addition, all opinions expressed on this blog are probably wrong, and should never be taken as medical advice in any form.